Getting into Ripon Grammar School
The Ripon Grammar 11+, set by GL Assessment: what it involves and what to do next, for entry in September 2027.
Every fact on this page is checked against the school’s published admissions information, and nothing is guessed. · View sources · Report an error
Registration for the September 2026 test closed on 30 June 2026. 1 weeks to test day.
What to do and when
Sitting the year after (2028 entry)? These are 2027-entry dates, and yours are not published yet: there is nothing you need to do this far out. Sign up for reminders and tick the 2028-entry box, and we’ll email only when your cycle’s dates are out and it is actually time to act.
5 dates as a calendar file, for Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. Share the link with anyone who needs them.
Life’s busy, so we’ll email you a nudge before each Ripon Grammar deadline above. Nothing else: no newsletter, no marketing, and the reminders stop for good after National Offer Day (1 Mar 2027) unless you sign up again for another school.
The test
Ripon Grammar sits the GL Assessment 11+.
GL Assessment sets the 11+ for most grammar schools in England, including this one. Papers are multiple-choice, and scores are age-standardised: children born at different points in the school year are marked against slightly different scales, so a summer-born child isn’t disadvantaged. Because GL is the most widely used format, familiarisation materials and practice papers in the same style are easy to come by.
Because GL is multiple-choice and age-standardised, the two things that move a score are accuracy under time pressure and covering every question type rather than the comfortable ones. PlusProgress practice is adaptive across English, Maths, Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning, so it keeps finding the types your child is weakest on instead of rewarding what they already do well, and mock papers follow the format this school sets. Progress is reported as a standardised age score, the same scale the school will use.
The pass mark is not fixed in advance. It is whatever score picks out the highest scoring 28% of Year 6 children living in the Ripon selective area, and children from outside that area must reach the same mark. English and Maths stay within Year 5 content.
How places are decided
117 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: Yes. Places normally go to children living in the City of Ripon and 25 named parishes around it, among them Bishop Monkton, Burton Leonard, Kirkby Malzeard, Markington, Sharow and North Stainley.
North Yorkshire Council is the admission authority: Ripon Grammar School is a community school, so the council runs both the selection scheme and the allocation of places.
Every child must first reach the cut-off mark in the selection tests.
- 117 in total, of which 14 are reserved for boarders, so 103 day places unless boarding is undersubscribedDay placesafter admitting children with an EHCP naming the school
10 ranked criteria decide the order, across 2 lists. Tie-break within any group: first a sibling at the school at the time of admission, then the shortest home-to-school route measured by the council's electronic mapping system, then random allocation if distance cannot separate applicants.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked after children and all previously looked after children, including children who appear to the admissions authority to have been in state care outside England and ceased to be so through adoption.
- 2.Children the authority considers have special social or medical reasons for admission, supported by a professional recommendation.
- 3.Children living within the catchment area of the school.
- 4.Children of staff at the school, where the member of staff has been employed for more than two years at the time of admission and/or was recruited to fill a demonstrable skill shortage.
- 5.Children living outside the catchment area of the school.
- 1.Looked after and previously looked after children, including children in state care outside England.
- 2.Children of members of the UK Armed Forces who qualify for Ministry of Defence financial assistance with boarding fees.
- 3.Children with a boarding need (children at risk or with an unstable home environment, children of service personnel who died in service or were discharged through attributable injury, and children of key workers and Crown Servants working abroad).
- 4.Applications for termly boarding.
- 5.Applications for weekly boarding. Boarding tie-break: a sibling at the school in the September of the year of entry, then those living furthest from the school. If fewer than 14 boarding applications are made, the remaining places are allocated as day places.
What an EHCP is: an Education, Health and Care Plan, a legal document from your council for a child with special educational needs. Where a plan names a school, that school has to offer a place, so those places are taken out of the number above before anyone else is ranked. It is not a route most families can apply through.
Taken from the school’s own determined admission arrangements. The full document is linked under sources.
How many children actually sit
Schools and councils publish some of this and not all of it. The numbers below came from Freedom of Information requests, which anyone can make, and each one links to the reply it came from.
247 children sat for Ripon Grammar in 2024, for 117 places, about 2.1:1. Source
How pupils here do at GCSE
This is based on how pupils at this school go on to perform in their GCSEs, five years after the 11+. Attainment 8 is their average result across eight subjects. Read it as a description of outcomes rather than of teaching: a selective school admits children who were already scoring well at ten, so a high position here reflects who the school takes in as much as what it does with them.
Scores from Compare school and college performance data in England, Department for Education, 2024/25, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The Department publishes the scores and does not publish a ranking: the position above is ours, calculated over state-funded schools with a published score. See the full table.
Test week: one calm timed run-through, then rest.